I was fortunate to obtain access to the papers ofEugen Hadamowsky as well as those of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and of the propa-ganda ministry itself at the Zentrales Staatsarchiv in Po
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David Irving
Goebbels.
Mastermind of the Third Reich
“David Irving is in the first rank of Britain’s historical chroniclers”— THE TIMES
This Internet edition is the gift of the author and his publishing imprint Focal Point to the academic and student world We ask only that the intellectual and copyrights be respected.
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IN MEMORY OF
MICHAEL SHEPPARD WHO CLIMBED TOO FAR
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Contents
Acknowledgements 5
Prologue: The Mark of Cain 14
I: The Hater of Mankind 1: Eros Awakes 23
2: Prodigal Son 41
3: ‘A Wandering Scholar, I’ 48
4: The Little Agitator 64
5: God Disposes Otherwise 76
II: The Gauleiter of Berlin 6: The Opium Den 90
7: Fighting the Ugly Dragon 113
8: Anka is to Blame 129
9: Conjuring up Spirits 139
10: A Rather Obstinate Gentleman 154
11: The Nightmare 165
12: Hold the Flag High 175
13: His Week in Court 192
14: A Blonde in the Archives 206
15: Maria Magdalena Quandt 216
16: The Stranger and the Shadow 235
17: The Man of Tomorrow 253
18: Follow that Man 268
19: ‘It’s all Fixed!’ 284
III: The Reich Minister 20: The Big Lie 290
21: Bonfire of the Books 304
22: Twilight of the Gods and Tally-ho 322
23: Inkpot Hero 343
24: While Crowds Exult below 361
25: A Man of Property 385
26: Femme Fatale 394
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27: The Round Table 408
28: Something about March 427
29: The Gambler 447
30: Duty put on Hold 465
31: The Real Chum 477
32: Broken Glass 488
33: On the Verge 509
34: Put Poland on Page Two 527
IV: The Propaganda Warrior 35: Pact with the Devil 545
36: War 561
37: Propaganda Means Repetition 581
38: Knocking out Front Teeth 590
39: Breaking Even 606
40: A Few Choice Drops of Poison 622
41: The Malodorous Thing 640
42: No Room for Two of Us 651
43: Exodus 671
44: A Fate which Beggars all Description 688
45: At any Price 705
46: The Road to Stalingrad 717
47: Things have not Panned out 733
48: Sin Will Pluck on Sin 750
49: The Katyn Massacre 766
50: The First Battle of Berlin 780
51: The White Suit Bespattered 794
52: When the Going gets Tough 808
53: The Long-Awaited Day 825
54: Valkyrie 839
55: Total War 853
V: The Loyal Henchman 56: The Spectre of the Hangman 869
57: Kill off the Prisoners 883
58: Death of Another Empress 896
59: The Man of the Century 905
Epilogue: ‘Ever at your Side’ 927
Trang 5on the diaries.) I was able to use them myself in June and July of the same year,probably the first person to have untied the string on those boxes since Withthe support of Dr V␣ P Tarasov, chief of the Russian federation’s archives, and Dr V NBondarev, chief of the former Soviet secret state archives, I was able to retrieve orcopy some five hundred pages of the most important missing passages of the diary,including Goebbels’ first diary, begun in , the Reichstag fire, the Röhm Putsch, the Kristallnacht, the months before the outbreak of war in
and many other historically significant episodes The conditions in these chives in Moscow’s Viborg street were, it must be said, challenging: Soviet archiveswere designed for keeping things secret, and the very notion of a public researchroom was alien to them This one had no microfilm or microfiche reader After strug-gling to read the , fragile glass microfiches (some , pages) with a thumb-nail-sized x magnifier on my first visit, I was able, through the generosity of the
ar-London Sunday Times, to donate a sophisticated film and fiche reader to the Russians
on my second; the bulky machine arrived back in London, without explanation, oneday after I did in July
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What followed was a less enlightened episode I provided extracts from these
dia-ries to Times Newspapers Ltd in Britain The Sunday Times published them along with Der Spiegel in Germany and other major newspapers around the world I also
donated complete sets to the German federal archives in Koblenz and to the archives
of Goebbels’ native city Mönchengladbach Nevertheless, while the internationalpress celebrated the retrieval of the long-lost diaries many rival historians registeredsomething approaching a cry of pain
Their injured professional amour propre proved infectious While spending half a
million pounds promoting its serialization of the diaries’ scoop, the Sunday Times
mentioned the name of the person who acquired them in the smallest type-size known
to man; Der Spiegel printed the series for five weeks without mentioning him at all A
Berlin university historian, whose team has been labouring for years on the othervolumes of the diaries, reported at length on the ‘new find’ to a symposium in theUnited States, again without reference to either Dr Fröhlich, the discoverer—towhom all real credit is due—or to myself.* The directors of Piper Verlag, Munich,who a few weeks later published an abridged popular edition of the other GoebbelsDiaries,† deplored in a German television news bulletin that ‘Mr Irving of all peo-ple’ should have exclusively obtained these sensational missing diaries—and failed
to mention either then or in their publication that without reward he had at the lastminute made one hundred pages available with which they had filled aching gaps intheir publication
Even more lamentable have been the actions of the German government’s federalarchives, the Bundesarchiv, to whom I also donated many Goebbels documents in-cluding a set of all the diaries I retrieved in Moscow On the instructions of the
* Dr Jürgen Michael Schulz, of the Berlin Free University, ‘Zur Edition der GoebbelsTagebücher,’ a paper presented to the German Studies Association conference,
See its Newsletter, vol.xvii, No., winter , ff.
† Dr Ralf Georg Reuth (ed.), Joseph Goebbels Tagebücher, five vols (Munich, Zürich,
)
Trang 7of Third Reich film productions, to provide still photographs of the leading actorsand actresses who play a part in the Goebbels story, the firm cautiously inquired ofProfessor Friedrich Kahlenberg, head of the Bundesarchiv, whether ‘special consid-erations’ might apply against helping me! (A copy of their letter fortuitously cameinto my hands, but not the pictures I had requested.) The background can only besurmised Professor Kahlenberg had hurried to Moscow in July —too late toprevent the Russians from granting me access to the coveted microfiches of theGoebbels diaries (There was no reason why the Russians should have denied meaccess: Several of my books, including those on Arctic naval operations and on Nazinuclear research, have been published by Soviet printing houses.) The Bundesarchivhas justified its banishment, which is without parallel in any other archives, on thegrounds that my research might harm the interests of the Federal Republic of Ger-many The ban has prevented me from verifying my colleagues’ questionable tran-scriptions of certain key words in the handwritten diaries I had a list of twenty suchwords which I wished to double-check against the original negatives; pleading supe-rior orders, the Bundesarchiv’s deputy director, Dr Siegfried Büttner, refused toallow even this brief concluding labour As one consequence, evidently unforeseen
by the German government, the Bundesarchiv has had to return to England its ‘IrvingCollection,’ half a ton of records which I had deposited in its vaults for researchersover the last thirty years These include originals of Adolf Eichmann’s papers, copies
of two missing years of Heinrich Himmler’s diary, the diaries of Erwin Rommel,Alfred Jodl, Wilhelm Canaris, Walther Hewel, and a host of other papers not avail-able elsewhere
I HASTEN to add that with this one exception every international archive has accorded
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to me the kindness and unrestricted access to which I have become accustomed inthirty years of historical research I would particularly mention the efforts of DrDavid G Marwell, director of the American-controlled Berlin Document Center(BDC), in supplying to me , pages of biographical documents relating toGoebbels’ staff However these now, like the collections formerly archived in Mos-cow and in the DDR, also come under the arbitrary ægis of the Bundesarchiv.Marwell’s predecessor, the late Richard Bauer, provided me with the BDC’s file onGoebbels (my film DI–).* In the German socialist party’s Friedrich Ebert Stiftung
in Bonn, deputy archivist Dr Ulrich Cartarius generously granted to me privilegedaccess to the original handwritten diary of Viktor Lutze, chief of staff of the S.A.(–), on which he was currently working Karl Höffkes of Essen kindly let meuse the Julius Streicher diary and papers in his private archives
The Yivo Institute for Jewish Research in New York also allowed me to exploittheir fine Record Group , which houses a magnificent collection of original files
of propaganda ministry documents, including Goebbels’ own bound volumes of pressclippings I must also mention my Italian publishers, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore,and their senior editor Dr Andrea Cane, who made available to me for transcriptionGoebbels’ entire handwritten diary—it was a two-year task, but without that
‘head start’ in reading Goebbels’ formidable script I should have been unable tomake the sense of the Moscow cache that I did This is also the proper place to thank
my friend and rival Dr Ralf Georg Reuth, author of an earlier Goebbels biography,for unselfishly transferring to me a copy of Horst Wessel’s diary and substantial parts
of the Goebbels diary, to which I added from Moscow and other sources.The attitude of the other German official archives was very different from that ofthe Bundesarchiv in Koblenz Dr Hölder, president of the German federal statistics
* A listing of the author’s relevant microfilmed records is on pp n of this work.Most can be ordered from Microform Academic Publishers Ltd., Main Street, EastArdsley, Wakefield, West Yorkshire WF AT, England (tel + ; fax
)
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agency (Statistisches Bundesamt) in Wiesbaden, provided essential data on Jewishpopulation movements with reference to Berlin Two staff members (Lamers andKunert) of the Mönchengladbach archives provided several of the early school pho-tos and snapshots of girlfriends reproduced in this work André Mieles of the DeutschesInstitut für Filmkunde (German Institute of Cinematography) provided many of theoriginal movie stills and other fine photographs of filmstars I owe thanks to TadeuszDuda and the Jagiellonski Library of University of Kraków, Poland, for the photo-graphs reproduced from Horst Wessel’s diary in their custody Dr Werner Johe of theForschungsstelle für die Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus (Research Office forthe History of National Socialism) in Hamburg volunteered data from the diary ofGauleiter Albert Krebs Karl Heinz Roth of the Hamburg Stiftung für Sozialgeschichtedes Jahrhunderts (Foundation for the Social History of the Twentieth Century)assisted me in dating certain episodes in The state archives of Lower Saxony(Niedersächsisches Staatsarchiv) in Wolfenbüttel let me read Leopold Gutterer’spapers and I am glad to have been able to interview Dr Gutterer, now over ninety, onseveral occasions for this book I was fortunate to obtain access to the papers ofEugen Hadamowsky as well as those of Joseph and Magda Goebbels and of the propa-ganda ministry itself at the Zentrales Staatsarchiv in Potsdam while it was still in thecommunist zone of Germany; most of the files—e.g., vol., Goebbels’ letters tohis colleagues at the Front—had remained untouched since last being used by DrHelmut Heiber in In those last dramatic days before November , archi-vist Dr Kessler gave me unlimited access despite cramped circumstances; those filestoo have now passed under the less liberal control of the Bundesarchiv
Although any biographer of Goebbels owes a debt to Dr Helmut Heiber, who firsttrod the paths to the papers in Potsdam, he will forgive me for not using his other-wise excellent published volumes of Goebbels’ speeches; often important phrases—faithfully reported by local British and other diplomats in the audiences—were omit-ted from the published texts on which Heiber relies; these diplomatic records, aswell as other important documents, I have extracted from the holdings of the PublicRecord Office in London, capably helped by Susanna Scott-Gall as a research assist-
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ant Shortly before its completion Manfred Müller, an expert of the early years ofthe Goebbels family, generously commented on my manuscript and let me read hisown biography of Hans Goebbels, the brother of the Reichminister
The Institut für Zeitgeschichte (IfZ) in Munich gave me the run of its library andarchives and made available to me its files of press clippings on Nazi personalities.But here too a possessiveness, an unseemly territorialism came into play as the IfZcontrived to protect its virtual monopoly in unpublished fragments of the Goebbelsdiaries Before coming across the Moscow cache, I had asked the IfZ, while research-ing there in , for access to its Goebbels diaries holdings for the two years and ; on May the director of the IfZ refused in writing, stating that it was theinstitute’s strict and invariable practice not to make available ‘to outsiders’ collec-tions that it was still processing This was why—since I could not conceive of com-pleting the biography properly without those volumes—I travelled to Moscow, where
I had learned that the original Nazi microfiches were housed; here I accessed, to theMunich institute’s chagrin, not only the volumes for and but the entirediaries from to —but not before the institute, in an attempt to secure myeviction, had urgently faxed to Moscow on July , the allegation, which theymany weeks later honourably withdrew†, that I was stealing from the Soviet ar-chives Foul play indeed—methods of which Dr Goebbels himself would probably
have been proud That was not all A few days later, hearing that the Sunday Times
intended to publish the diaries which I had found in Moscow, the same institute, with
a haste that would have been commendable under other circumstances, furnished to
journalists on the Daily Mail, a tabloid English newspaper, the diary material which it
had denied to me two months earlier: as of course they were entitled to There wasone pleasing denouement The tabloid newspaper—which had paid out £, inanticipation of its scoop—found that neither it nor its hired historians could read theminister’s notoriously indecipherable handwriting It abandoned its serialisation inimpotent fury two days later
† Süddeutsche Zeitung, July ,
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Of course this biography is not based on Dr Goebbels’ writings alone In no ticular sequence, I must make mention of Andrzej Suchcitz of the Polish Institute andSikorski Museum in London who provided to me important assistance on the prov-enance of Goebbels’ revealing secret speech about the Final Solution of September
par-; the George Arents library at the University of Syracuse, N.Y., who allowed me
to research in the Dorothy Thompson papers; and to Geoffrey Wexler, ReferenceArchivist of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, who gave access to Louis PLochner’s papers, copies of some of which are also housed in the Franklin D RooseveltLibrary at Hyde Park, N.Y I also owe thanks to the latter library for the use of othercollections including William B Donovan’s papers and the ‘presidential safe files’; Iused more of Donovan’s papers at the U.S Army Military History Institute at Car-lisle, Pa
Dr G Arlettaz of the Swiss federal archives in Berne, Dr Sven Welander of theLeague of Nations archives at the United Nations in Geneva, and Didier Grange ofthe Geneva city archives provided valuable information and photographs on Goebbels’
‘diplomatic’ visit to Geneva in In Germany I was greatly helped by the officials
of the Nuremberg state archive which houses reports on the post-war interrogations
of leading propaganda ministry and other officials (some of which I also read at theNational Archives in Washington D.C., where my friends John Taylor and RobertWolfe provided the same kindly and expert guidance as they have shown for severaldecades.)
Dr Howard B Gotlieb, director of the Mugar Memorial Library at Boston sity drew my attention to their collection of the former Berlin journalist Bella Fromm’spapers Archivist Margaret Petersen and assistant archivist Marilyn B Kann at theHoover Library at Stanford University, Ca., allowed me to see their precious trove
Univer-of original Goebbels diaries as well as the political-warfare papers Univer-of Daniel Lernerand Fritz Theodor Epstein The Seeley Mudd Library of Princeton University let mesee their precious Adolf Hitler collection, although they were not, alas, permitted toopen to me their Allen Dulles papers which contain several files on Goebbels and theJuly bomb plot Bernard R Crystal of the Butler Library of Columbia Univer-
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sity, N.Y., found several Goebbels items tucked away in the H␣ R Knickerbocker lection Dr Jay W Baird, of Miami University, Ohio, volunteered access to hisconfidential manuscripts on Werner Naumann, whom he had interviewed at length
col-on tape in and ; the manuscripts are currently held at the IfZ, which failed
to make them available despite authorisation from Baird The late Marianne Freifrauvon Weizsäcker, mother of the later President Richard von Weizsäcker, provided to
me access to her husband’s then unpublished diaries and letters (later published byLeonidas Hill) The late Freda Rössler, née Freiin von Fircks, talked to me at lengthabout her murdered husband Karl Hanke, Goebbels’ closest colleague, rival in love,and gauleiter of Breslau, and supplied copies of his letters and other materials.Major Charles E Snyder, USAF (retired), gave me a set of the precious original
proofs of the moving Goebbels family photos reproduced in this work; as in Hitler’s
War␣ (London, ) some colour photographs are from the unique collection of
unpublished portraits taken by Walter Frentz, Hitler’s HQ film cameraman, to whom
my thanks for entrusting the original transparencies to me Other photographs weresupplied by the U.S National Archives—I scanned around , prints from itsmagnificent collection of glass plates taken by Heinrich Hoffmann’s cameramen—and by Leif Rosas, Annette Castendyk (daughter of Goebbels’ first great love AnkaStalherm’s), and Irene Prange, who also entrusted to me Goebbels’ early corre-spondence with Anka Among those whom I was fortunate to interview were Hit-ler’s secretary Christa Schroeder, his adjutants Nicolaus von Below, Gerhard Engel,Karl-Jesco von Puttkamer, his press staff officials Helmut Sündermann and HeinzLorenz, his minister of munitions Albert Speer, and Goebbels’ senior aide ImmanuelSchäffer, all of whom have since died, as well as Traudl Junge, Otto Günsche, both ofHitler’s staff, Gunter d’Alquèn, the leading S.S journalist attached to the propa-ganda ministry, film director Leni Riefenstahl—who privately showed me her pro-ductions of the era—and film star Lida Baarova (now Lida Lundwall) I am grateful
to Thomas Harlan for talking to me about his mother the late film star Hilde Körber,and to Ribbentrop’s secretary Reinhard Spitzy and Admiral Raeder’s adjutant thelate Captain Herbert Friedrichs for anecdotes about Joseph and Magda Goebbels
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Gerta von Radinger (widow of Hitler’s personal adjutant Alwin Broder Albrecht),reminisced with me and provided copies of Albrecht’s letters to her, and of her corre-spondence with Magda Richard Tedor provided to me copies of rare volumes ofGoebbels’ articles and speeches Dr K Frank Korf gave me supplemental informa-tion about his own papers in Hoover Library Fritz Tobias supplied important papersfrom his archives about the Reichstag fire and trial, and notes on his interviews withwitnesses who have since died Israeli researcher Doron Arazi gave me several usefulleads on material in German archives Ulrich Schlie pointed out to me to key Goebbelspapers on foreign policy buried in the German foreign ministry archives Dr HelgeKnudsen corresponded with me in about the authenticity (or otherwise) ofRudolf Semler’s ‘diary’, whose publication he prepared in I corresponded in-ter alia with Willi Krämer, Goebbels’ deputy in the Reichspropagandaleitung; GünterKaufmann, chief of the Reichspropagandaamt (RPA, Reich Propaganda Agency) inVienna; and Wilhelm Ohlenbusch, who directed propaganda in occupied Poland.Wolf Rüdiger Hess and his mother Ilse Hess gave me exclusive access to the privatepapers of his late father, Rudolf Hess, in Hindelang including correspondence withGoebbels The late Dr Hans-Otto Meissner discussed with me Ello Quandt and othermembers of Goebbels’ entourage, whom he interviewed for his s biography ofMagda Goebbels Peter Hoffmann, William Kingsford professor of history at McGillUniversity in Montreal, reviewed my chapter on ‘Valkyrie’, as did Lady Diana Mosleythose pages relating to her own meetings with Goebbels in the Thirties; RobinDenniston, to whom I owe so much for twenty years, read through the whole manu-script, offered suggestions and advised me to temper criticism with charity moreoften than I had
DAVID IRVING
LONDON
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Prologue: The Mark of Cain
ARE man’s intellectual misfortunes visited upon him before birth, like some
ineradicable mark of Cain, or is he born free of all attributes?
Some basic instincts are inherent, buried deep within the cerebral lobes That much
is clear Xenophobia; the urge to mate; the instincts to survive and kill, these are asmuch part of the human mechanism as the escapement is part of the clock But how
is it with the more subtle qualities which, we hope, distinguish man from the lowerorders—his powers to persuade and lead, to cheat and deceive? In short, does theinfant come upon Earth unable to avoid the destiny already implanted in the neu-rones of his brain? Is it a genetic lottery? Here, a minute virus ordains that this manshall compose nine symphonies; there, an excess of dopamine will have him hearingthe devil’s whispered commands for the remainder of an adult life that may well becurtailed by the hangman’s rope
Every man has some say in his own fortunes The tangle of nerves and ganglia is notjust a rack which passively stores data and impressions It is open to each brain’sowner to work upon it, to devise by intellectual training the swiftest path between itand the muscles and voice over which it is to be master
From the convolutions in the brain’s left frontal lobe springs forth the voice that
commands other men to hate, to march, to dance, to die Moreover, man can
condi-tion this controlling instrument Man is what he eats, that is true But his brain is
more than that—it is what he has seen about him too The operas, the great works ofart and poetry, the ill-defined sensations of national pride and humiliation, all theseimpressions are encoded and stored away by the neurons of the brain And thusgradually one man comes to differ from the next
Since prehistoric times the human brain has remained impenetrable and lous Surgeons have trepanned into the human cranium in the hope of fathoming its
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secrets The Greeks, the Romans, and the mediæval Arabs all opened up their fellowhumans’ skulls to gaze upon the brain In the American army took Benito Mus-solini’s brain away for examination; they did the same with Dr Robert Ley’s brain,and the Russians with Lenin’s But no instrument has yet explained the brain’s capac-ity for evil
THE BRAIN which indirectly occupies us now has ceased its machinations one evening
in May Here it is, punctured by a ·-caliber bullet, lying in the ruined den of a government building in Berlin Next to its owner are the charred remains of
gar-a womgar-an, the metgar-al fgar-astenings tumbling out of her singed, once-blonde hgar-air Aroundthem both, callously grouped for the photographer, stand a Russian lieutenant-colo-nel, two majors, and several civilians
It is May 2, 1945: five P.M., and the building is the late Adolf Hitler’s Reich cellery The lieutenant-colonel is Ivan Isiavich Klimenko, head of Smersh (a Russianacronym for Soviet Counter-Intelligence) in a Rifle Corps He has been led here bythe Chancellery’s cook Wilhelm Lange and its garage manager Karl Schneider It hasbegun to pour with rain Klimenko’s men slide the two bodies onto a large red-and-gilt door torn from the building They scoop up a fire-blackened Walther pistol foundbeneath the man’s body, and another pistol found nearby; a gold badge; an engravedgold cigarette case, and other personal effects All will be needed for identification.1
Chan-Driving a Jeep, Klimenko leads the way back to Smersh headquarters set up in theold jailhouse at Plötzensee On the following day he returns to the Chancellery, stillhunting for the Führer Below ground, inside the bunker, he finds the bodies of sixchildren in pretty blue nightdresses or pyjamas He ships them out to Plötzensee too,together with the corpse of a burly German army officer, a suicide
The Russians bring all the guests of the five-star Continental Hotel out to Plötzensee,including a textiles merchant, a chaplain, and a hospital assistant, and invite them toidentify the cadavers. Even if the receding hairline, the Latin profile, the overwidemouth, and the unusually large cranium are not clues enough, then the steel splintwith its two ringlike clamps to clutch the calf muscles, and the charred leather straps
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Haase identifies them; Fritzsche hesitates, but the club foot and the orthopædicshoe clinch it for him ‘Check the Gold Party Badge,’ he suggests
The badge is cleaned of soot and dirt, and reveals the number —Goebbels’membership number in the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (the Naziparty)
“It’s Dr Goebbels,’ Fritzsche confirms.
This is almost the last public appearance of Dr Joseph Goebbels A few days laterthe Russians summon Hans Fritzsche out to G.P.U (secret police) headquarters atFriedrichshagen, in south-east Berlin and show him a notebook partly concealed by
a metal plate: he recognizes Goebbels’ handwriting, and asks to see more The Sovietofficer removes the plate and reveals a diary bound in red leather ‘We found twenty
of these, up to about , in the vaults of the Reichsbank,’ he says
The Russians arrange one final identification ceremony In a copse nearFriedrichshagen that Whitsun of they show Goebbels’ entire family, now rest-
ing in wooden coffins, to his former personal detective, the forty year old Feldpolizei
officer Eckold He identifies his former master without hesitation.
AMONG the personal effects was a gold cigarette case inscribed ‘Adolf Hitler,’ anddated ‘.x.’ That was Paul Joseph Goebbels’ birthday He had first opened hiseyes and uttered his first scream at No. Odenkirchener Strasse in the smokyLower Rhineland town of Rheydt on October , ; it was a thousand-year oldtextiles centre, set in a landscape of traditionally pious Catholics and hardworking
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country folk ‘The daily visit to church,’ writes Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels’ mostrecent biographer, ‘confession and family prayers at home and their mother makingthe sign of the cross on her kneeling children’s foreheads with holy water, were asmuch a part of their life as the daily bread for which their father toiled at Lennartz’gas-mantle factory.’ Their father Fritz Göbbels—that is the spelling in Paul Joseph’sbirth certificate—was W H Lennartz & Co’s dependable, Catholic though certainlynot bigoted bookkeeper. It is not over fanciful to suspect that he chose the child’ssecond name in honour of Dr Josef Joseph, a revered local Jewish attorney and closefamily friend; the child had often been sent round to talk literature with this neigh-bour. Fritz persevered with the Lennartz company almost until he died, struggling,through thrift and application, to provide a better life for his family than he hadknown himself
He himself had been born here to a tailor’s family from Beckrath south-west ofRheydt He had the same bulbous nose as his father Conrad Göbbels and as hisbrother Heinrich, a paunchy commercial traveller in textiles with all the ready witthat Fritz so sorely lacked Fritz’s mother Gertrud was a peasant’s daughter Fromfirst to last his relations with his youngest son Joseph were strained Aware that hisown career would see little more advancement, he made sacrifices for ‘little Jupp’(Jüppche), which were most inadequately repaid He struggled painfully for promo-tion in the firm from errand boy to clerk, then to bookkeeper with a starched collar,and finally director in the obligatory stovepipe hat As his father’s life drew to itsclose years later, Joseph would see in him only a ‘petty minded, grubby, beer swillingpedant, concerned only with his pathetic bourgeois existence and bereft of any im-agination.’ Among his effects were found blue cardboard account books in which hehad detailed every penny he had spent since marriage. Conceding grudgingly thathis father would in all likelihood go to Heaven, Joseph would write: ‘I just can’tunderstand why Mother married the old miser.’ He painted a picture of his fatherlying in bed three-quarters of the day, then reading papers, drinking beer, smokingand cursing his wife, who had already been about her housework since six A.M His
Trang 18as housekeeper to a distant relative, a local rector at Rheindahlen; she had spent heryouth there with all her brothers and sisters except for Joseph Odenbach, Goebbels’sarchitect godfather, who had stayed at Uebach It was at Rheindahlen that Katharinahad met Fritz Göbbels and married him in .
So much for Goebbels’ parents Two sons had arrived before him, Konrad andHans. Three sisters followed him: two, Maria and Elisabeth, died young, a third,also christened Maria, was born twelve years after Joseph We shall occasionallyglimpse Konrad and Hans, struggling through the depression until Joseph’s rise topower from which they too profited, being appointed to head Nazi publishing housesand insurance associations respectively Maria remained the apple of his eye.Through living frugally, and thanks to a pay rise to , marks per annum, in
his father was able to purchase outright a modest house at No. DahlenerStrasse in Rheydt (still standing today as No.). There was no front garden; itstwo bare windows beside the front door still overlook a monumental mason’s yard.Young Joseph had his room under the sloping roof, his mansard window’s view lim-ited to the skies above This remained ‘home’ for him, the fulcrum of his life, longafter he left it as a young man
He remembered his sickly earliest years only dimly He recalled playing with friendscalled Hans, Willy, Otto (whom he knew as ‘Öttche’) and the Maassen brothers,and a bout of pneumonia which he only barely survived He was always a little mite
of a fellow Even in full manhood he would weigh less than one hundred pounds
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At age six his mother placed him in the primary school (Volksschule) right next to
the house Bathing little Joseph his mother often found the weals on his back caused
by one particularly sadistic teacher’s cane Goebbels was a stubborn and conceitedboy Fifteen or twenty years later he would reveal, in an intimate handwritten note,how his mental turmoil both delighted and tormented him ‘Earlier,’ he wrote, ‘whenSaturday came and the afternoon yawned ahead of me, there was no restraining me.The whole of the past week with all its childish horrors weighed down upon my soul
I seized my prayer book and betook myself to church; and I contemplated all thegood and the bad that the week had brought me, and then I went to the priest andconfessed everything that was troubling my soul.’
HIS right leg had always hurt When he was about seven, a medical disaster befell himwhich would change his life ‘I see before me,’ he would reminisce, ‘a Sunday walk—
we all went over to Geistenbeck The next day, on the sofa, I had an attack of my oldfoot pains Mother was at the washtub Screams I was in agony The masseur, Mr.Schiering Prolonged treatment Crippled for rest of my life Examined at Bonn uni-versity clinic Much shrugging of shoulders My youth from then on,’ Goebbels musedpiteously, ‘somewhat joyless.’
In adulthood his right foot was centimetres long—· centimetres shorter than
the left; its heel was drawn up and the sole looked inwards (equino-varus) The right
leg was correspondingly shorter than the left, and thinner The indications are thatGoebbels’ defect was not genetic but acquired as the result of some disease. Itdefied all attempts at surgical remedy; had the deformation occurred at birth, whenthe bones are soft, it would have been relatively easy to manipulate them back intothe right alignment Perhaps he acquired it from osteomyelitis (a bone marrow in-flammation) or from infantile paralysis He would hint, at age thirty, that the de-formity developed from an accident at age thirteen or fourteen.
This schoolboy with a large, intelligent cranium, a puny, underdeveloped body and
a club foot lived out his childhood to a chorus of catcalls, jeers and ridicule It was,
he later accepted, ‘one of the seminal episodes of my childhood… I became lonely
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and eccentric Perhaps this was why I was everybody’s darling at home.’ He learnedhow cruel children could be ‘I could say a thing or two about that,’ he would sigh inhis diary, aged twenty-six. Each creature, he now saw, had to struggle for survival inits own way
When he was ten they operated on his deformed foot He later recalled the familyvisiting him one Sunday in the hospital; he flooded with tears as his mother left, andpassed an unforgettably grim half hour before the anaesthetic The operation left thepain and deformity worse than before But his Aunt Christine brought him somefairy tales to read, and thus he discovered in reading a world of silent friends thatcould not taunt or ridicule
When he returned to his mansard room he began to devour every book and clopedia that he could lay his hands on
ency-He would show them: the brain, if properly prepared and used, could outwit thebrawniest physique
Soviet documents on the identification of the cadavers of Goebbels and his family were
published by Lev Bezymenski in Der Tod von Adolf Hitler (Munich, Berlin, ), ff and
ff; Soviet surgeon Lieutenant-Colonel Grachow established the children’s cause of death
as ‘toxic carbohæmoglobin,’ and makes no mention of bullet wounds in Joseph or Magda Goebbels; but for political reasons the KGB also suppressed references to the bullet entry in Hitler’s head.
Testimony of Paul Schmidt at Amtsgericht Berlin-Zehlendorf, Oct , (Institut für Zeitgeschichte, Munich [hereafter IfZ]: F, Heiber papers); William Henning in Hamburger
Freie Presse, Nov , .
Testimony of Fritzsche, Apr , (Hoover Libr.: K Frank Korf papers).
On May the British ambassador in Moscow was told that the bodies of Goebbels and family (but not of Hitler) had been found ‘The cause of death was poison.’ (Tel to Foreign Office London [cit hereafter as FO], May Public Record Office [PRO] file FO./
); also Krasnaya Zvyezda, Moscow, and United Press despatch in New York Times [cit as
NYT ], May , .
Former Kommissar of Geheime Feldpolizei Wilhelm Eckold, quoted in ‘Zehn ehemalige
Generale zurückgekehrt,’ in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung [cited as FAZ], Jan , ; he was
Goebbels’ personal detective -, -.
Today it is numbered Odenkirchener Strasse.
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Ralf Georg Reuth, Goebbels (Munich, ); a solid volume particularly well-researched
in Reuth’s native Berlin archives and the Goebbels papers held by François Genoud in Lausanne (cited hereafter as Reuth).
Birth certificate issued by Rheydt-Mitte registrars’ office, No./ (IfZ: F, Heiber papers); under Germany’s Data Protection Act such documents are no longer available to historians.—Copy of certificate in Landesarchiv Berlin, Rep., item , vol.vii —JG’s brother Hans listed their father’s occupation as Werkmeister (overseer) on his NSDAP (Nazi
Party) application form (in BDC files); in his handwritten early memoirs (Erinnerungsblätter, henceforth cited as EB) JG himself described his father as a Handlungsgehilfe (trade clerk).— The Erinnerungsblätter and some diaries (–, incomplete) are transcribed expertly by
Dr Elke Fröhlich of the IfZ in Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels Sämtliche Fragmente ( vols.)
(Munich, ); the original manuscript of EB is on microfiche in packet , box , of the Goebbels collection (‘Fond ’) recently located by Fröhlich in the former Soviet Special State Archives in Moscow, a collection of , glass plates (approximately , images)
of his diaries and manuscripts, first researched and used by myself On one microfiche is a
‘Tagebuch —Okt ’ but this diary is nearly empty.—On the family name, see
Pe-ter Jansen’s article ‘Der Sippenname “Goebbels”’ by PePe-ter Jansen (of Uebach) in Westdeutscher
Beobachter, Nr., Apr , ; he found traces of GOBELIN (tapestry) and GODEBERAHT (God-famed) in the name Also the article ‘Geilenkirchener Land Stammland der Sippe Goebbels,’ with photographs of the ancestral Goebbels homes in Uebach, Odenhofen etc.,
ibid., Oct , .
In Goebbels mentioned a ‘Rechtsanwalt Joseph’ in EB Dr Josef Joseph published
an open letter to JG in Nov from his exile in the USA Günter Erckens, Juden in
Mönchengladbach (Mönchengladbach, ), f.
Conrad was a Hofverwalter (farm bailiff) from Gevelsdorf He had married Gertrud Margarete Rosskamp of Beckrath.
I have adhered more closely to what Goebbels himself wrote in his Jul
Erinnerungsblätter [EB], ‘Von bis zu meinem ersten Semester in Bonn,’ than to Helmut Heiber or to other secondary sources.
Wilfried von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende, (‘Apr , ’).
Diary, Aug , , , The birth certificate identifies his job as Handlungsgehilfe (trade clerk).
Against which, see New York Times [NYT], Jun , : ‘Goebbels Never Helped Aged
Mother’ (an alleged interview of her and Goebbels’ sister Maria).
Diary, Jul , : ‘Dat kömp op Kreg ut’—That comes from the war On the Dutch
side of the border river Wurm the Dutch spoke Limburg platt, almost identical to the platt
spoken on the German side.
She was born at Uebach on Apr , and died Aug , , aged She stated on Mar , that her mother Maria Katharina Odenhausen née Coervers was born in
at Uebach and died in Krefeld, Germany, in ; her father (Johann) Michael Odenhausen was born at Uebach and died at Mönchen-Gladbach in All were Catholic (Korf pa- pers).
Born Aug , ; joined the NSDAP in Dec , becoming a Kreisleiter; promoted to Gau publishing chief in , acting as business manager of the Völkischer Verlag in Düsseldorf.
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In he became publisher of the Frankfurter Volksblatt then head of the Gau publishing
house in Hessen-Nassau and manager of the Rhein-Mainische Zeitung From to he
was in the SA reserve Promoted to Reichsamtsleiter (a medium Party rank) in .— Biographical file in the Berlin Document Center and in the National Archives, Washington
DC [hereafter: NA]: Record Group [RG] , XE., Werner Naumann.—And,
Frank-furter Neue Presse, Aug , .
Hans Johann Friedrich Goebbels, born Jan , , died Aug , ; joined NSDAP
in (No.,) and the SA in , rising to Oberführer on Nov , In -
he was Propagandaleiter of an Ortsgruppe (Local), then of a Kreis (District) and chairman
of a Kreis party court (Uschla) From to he was general manager of the cial Fire and Life Insurance Co of the Rhineland, and permanent deputy president of the provincial Landesversicherungsanstalt Rheinprovinz from To the rage of his parents he married a protestant, Hertha Schell, by whom he had a son Lothar () and daughter Eleonore ().—Ibid.
Provin- Konrad Goebbels, born Jun , , died June , leaving one daughter Maria’s (deceased) sisters were Maria (died in infancy) and Elisabeth (born , died ): testi- mony, Mar , (Korf papers) There were also aunts and uncles: his mother’s sisters were Anna Simons (- or ), Christine Jansen (-) and Maria Jansen (-); her brothers were Joseph Odenhausen (died ), Peter Odenhausen (-
) and Johann Odenhausen (-).
In Genoud’s papers are Fritz Göbbels’s bank statements -, and a blue account book in which he recorded every penny spent (Reuth, , ).
Writing to Anka Stalherm on Sep , he described poring with Willy Zilles over old school relics—‘a little picture of my First Communion, a school picture of the Second Form, a dictation book from the First.’ (Bundesarchiv Koblenz [cited as BA] Goebbels pa- pers, ‘Film ,’ NL./); François Genoud, guardian of Goebbels’s papers (and inter- ests) owns a letter from Willy Zilles to him dated Jan -, .
Goebbels manuscript for Else Janke, (BA: NL./).
The late Curt Riess, in Joseph Goebbels (Baden Baden, ), states that JG suffered from
a bone marrow inflammation at age seven, and the foot deformation resulted from the sequent operation JG’s diary for Aug , records his brother Konrad as suffering from
con-an unspecified chronic foot complaint.
Later he would suggest it was a war injury: Party Court, session of Jun , (BDC file, Goebbels; author’s microfilm DI–).
EB, Wilfried von Oven saw that a Somerset Maugham novel about a youth born with a club foot, taunted and bullied in his childhood, featured prominently in JG’s book-
shelf in the Second World War (Finale Furioso, Tübingen, , f).
Diary, Jul , .
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: Eros Awakes
THE OTHER boys at the Gymnasium in Rheydt’s Augusta Strasse, which he
entered at Easter , regarded him as a sneak and know-all. He ingratiated himself with teachers, particularly with the scripture teacherFather Johannes Mollen, by telling on his truant comrades ‘My comrades,’ he wouldconfess, ‘never liked me, except for Richard Flisges.’ He would find Flisges in theupper fifth (Obersekunda) in His closest friends were three ‘Herberts’—Hompesch, Beines, and Lennartz. Herbert Lennartz, son of his father’s boss, diedafter a minor operation leaving Goebbels grieved and shocked It moved him tocompose his first poem (‘Why did you have to part from me so soon?’)
At first he was lazy and apathetic, numbed by the realization of his physical formity Then he overcompensated, and later he was never far from the top of theclass His love of Latin came falteringly at first, then in full flood With biting ironyand sarcasm Christian Voss tutored him in German literature—and in sarcasm andirony as well While brothers Hans and Konrad had to leave school early, Josephexcelled. His agile brain enabled him to tackle everything, his essays attracted scowls
de-of envy from his fellow pupils With clenched fists and gleaming eyes young Goebbelslistened as history teacher Dr Gerhard Bartels taught his class about Germany’schequered past. His father and mother wanted him to become a priest—not justbecause the church would then pay for his higher education; they were a deeplyreligious family When Joseph’s little sister Elisabeth died in they all knelt around
Trang 24Joseph, now in the Upper Sixth (Oberprima) , wrote in , ‘We have already
wit-nessed great and terrible events Greater still and even more terrible is what lies instore for us May the German people persevere, because if we do then victory can-
not be long in abeyance.’ Again his teacher red-inked gut onto the essay. As author
of the best essay, Goebbels had the honour of delivering the valedictory speech whenschool ended on March , He implored his listeners that they were the veryelements of a Germany on which the entire world now gazed with fear and admira-tion; he spoke of Germany’s ‘global mission,’ not merely as a nation of poets andthinkers, but one entitled to become ‘the political and spiritual leader of the world.’
‘Very good,’ the headmaster Dr Gruber told him ‘But mark my words, you’ll nevermake a good orator!’
Goebbels passed the school-certificate examination at Easter In the mainqualities—conduct, attentiveness, behaviour, diligence, and handwriting—he gained
a string of “very goods,’ as he did in religion, German and Latin; in Greek, French,
history, geography, physics and even in mathematics he was gut He again tried to
enlist, but was accepted only for a few weeks’ service as a penpusher at the Reichsbank.His painful deformity had thus given him at least one advantage, a headstart on hislater comrades in the political battle He would already be at university while AdolfHitler, Hermann Göring, and Rudolf Hess were fighting under the skies of Flanders
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His intellectual horizon was expanding In his father had purchased secondhand
a piano, that symbol of the solid middle class; the family and neighbours clusteredround as four furniture-men manhandled the piano indoors Joseph rapidly mas-tered the instrument He also developed a talent for play-acting and mime At agethirteen he saw Richard Wagner’s majestic opera ‘Tannhäuser’ and was inspired bythe romantic dive and sweep of the master’s music. But what was to become of himnow? The priesthood? Goebbels inclined briefly toward medicine, but Voss, his teacher,persuaded him that his real talents lay in literature Whichever the subject, the uni-versity at Bonn it would be
JOSEPH Goebbels reaches puberty at about thirteen But given his later reputation is itworth emphasising that he will be thirty-three before he first has sexual intercoursewith a woman. For the intervening twenty years this brilliant but celibate cripple’slife will be a trail of temptations, near-seductions, and sexual rebuffs etched into hismemory At thirteen he and his pal Herbert Beines have a grubby mudlark of a friend,Herbert Harperscheidt, whose stepmother Therese always wears crisp, clean skirts;
so Joseph Goebbels recalls fourteen years later The sexual arousal that he first tects towards this mature female returns when he is fifteen He harbours secret crushes
de-on women like Frau Lennartz, the factory owner’s wife Evidently another passide-on-object, his brother Hans’s girlfriend Maria Liffers, does not return his feelings be-cause his teachers and her parents protest and Goebbels has a frightful scene with hisfather All of his pals have girlfriends—Hompesch has one enticingly called MariaJungbluth Goebbels however senses only a ‘dark yearning’ as Eros awakes in him
passion-‘My libido is sick,’ he will write aged twenty-six ‘In affairs of the heart we humansare all scandalously selfish For the phallus we sacrifice hecatombs of immortal souls.’Basking in what he sees as one woman’s love he will reflect, ‘I am everything toher.␣ ␣ Or am I allowed to savour life’s treasures more intensely because I am doomed
to depart it early on? Now and again I have this premonition!’
At age eighteen, in , he begins a three year infatuation with a local girl, LeneKrage He calls it love, and will long recall their first chaste kiss in Garten Strasse
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But she is capricious and flighty, and his tormented soul drives him to the honoured refuge of writing a private diary At Christmas he sends her a book ofhis own poetry Leaving Rheydt for Bonn university in March he says farewell
time-to Lene They find themselves locked in Kaiser Park that night, and he kisses herbreast for the first time: characterizing this milestone event seven years later hewrites coyly, ‘She becomes a loving woman for the first time.’ It will become clearthat he means this only in the broadest sense
HE was to study philology, Latin, and history Desperately lonely, he lodged in a coldbare room His aspirations were overshadowed by hunger, cold, fatigue, and ill-health
He had made one good friend in the law student Karlheinz Kölsch however and
fagged for him as the Leibfuchs (freshman valet) in the tradition of all mediæval
uni-versities ‘Pille’ Kölsch, as he was known, remained his foppish, loud-voiced, jovial,staunch friend and rival long after their careers had drifted apart With his modishheadgear and yellow gloves, Kölsch became his first role-model. He roped Goebbelsinto the tiny Bonn chapter (‘Sigfridia’) of the Catholic fraternity Unitas on May ,
. Its half-dozen members spent the weekly meetings solemnly debating gion and quaffing beer in the local hostelry, The Cockerel A record of the fraterni-ty’s get-together on June , shows them all partaking of Holy Communion,then listening while Goebbels—who had chosen the classical name of Ulex for him-self—delivered a well-received speech on “Wilhelm Raabe and us.” The fraternitybulletin refers to Ulex as one of their ‘splendid foxes’ (freshmen) and ‘determined to
reli-do honour to the principles of Unitas.’
His funds ran out, which scarcely mattered as at the end of July he was brieflyinducted into war service, and absolved his obligations by pushing a pen for a fewweeks in a home auxiliary service (he wrote an excellent copperplate script) Hewas keen to continue at university, but his father could put up only fifty marks permonth; Joseph earned a little more by tutoring He frittered away that summer withLene on vacation, spending at least one chaste night with her on her sofa at
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Rheindahlen, and committing to his memory that she ‘stayed pure’ He left a number
of unpaid bills at Bonn, which his father settled
The winter semester began on October , He submitted a formal tion for aid to the Diocese in Cologne The Albertus Magnus Society there providedaid to promising young Catholics The documents supporting his application showthat his father now earned , to , marks per annum, and had no liquidassets His scripture teacher Mollen testified:
applica-“Herr Goebbels comes from decent Catholic parents and deserves tion for his religious fervour and his general moral demeanour.“
commenda-Father Mollen, his mentor and spiritual benefactor, would explain years later that
he furnished this testimonial with the clearest conscience: ‘He was a very promising
scholar For nine years he had taken scripture lessons from me and had always shown
much interest, comprehension, and devotion He regularly attended school churchservices and the monthly Communion His attitude to me was confident, proper,and reverential.’ The parish priest at Rheydt seconded him Backed by these docu-ments, Goebbels humbly submitted on September , , his application to theDiocesan Committee of the Albertus Magnus Society for financial support for thewinter term -
“Because of a lame foot I am exempt from military service, and I should dearlylike to continue my studies next term For this however I am entirely thrownupon the mercy of the charity of my Catholic fellow-believers.“
The charity evidently asked him to produce an attendance certificate from Bonnuniversity He explained on September that he had not been able to complete theterm Convinced that his was a worthy cause, the Society sent him marks as afirst interest-free instalment of a loan finally totalling marks—about three months
of his father’s pay His address was now given as No. Post Strasse in Bonn; hewould return there in October
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BY the time of his final Ph.D examination in November he would have attendedfive different universities; this was not unusual in Germany The reasons are obscure:sometimes he was pursuing a particular girl, sometimes a certain professor, some-times a special course; frequently the lack of lodging space in one city decided that
he should study elsewhere that term instead
His speaking talents were already developed Hompesch told him he was a bornorator ‘Motor mouth!’ joked Kölsch’s brother Hermann in one letter, ‘There you
go, shooting it off again Well, there’s nobody can touch you on that score.’ ‘We reallyought to open a stall,’ Hermann joked in a letter two weeks later, ‘and do the rounds
of the church fêtes displaying you as the Man with the All-Round Mouth.’
Goebbels and ‘Pille’ Kölsch were inseparable They arranged for Jesuits like FatherRembold to lecture to the students, and once Goebbels proudly invited his old scrip-ture teacher, Father Mollen, to lecture too At Bonn he studied under Adolf Dyroff,professor of philosophy He attended the literary seminars of Professor BertholdLietzmann, and wrote well-regarded essays for Professor Carl Enders on the youth-ful drama fragments of Johann Wolfgang Goethe He stayed on in Bonn after termended on February , and moved into Kölsch’s lodgings in Wessel Strasse The April
issue of the Unitas journal reported that the two friends had decided to studynext in Berlin
AT CHRISTMAS Goebbels discovers his pal’s sister Agnes Kölsch and his yearning forLene turns to aversion Agnes visits him one day and they exchange one passionlesskiss on his sofa She foolishly introduces him to her sister Liesel, and an informaltriangle develops lasting well into the new year Agnes visits him in Bonn, and theyspend the night together—‘Ulex’ kisses her breasts; as he recalls it, she is all overhim After this he spends weekends at the Kölsch family home at Werl except oncewhen Liesel her sister comes to Bonn: Agnes is all but forgotten. Goebbels recallshaving been considerate to her, but he congratulates himself, with a certain smug-ness, ‘She is all over me.’ Agnes’ mother encourages Goebbels’ relationship with
Trang 29At Freiburg Pille embraces him, his eyes gleaming ‘Ulex!’, he announces, ‘I’vealready found this great girl Anka Stalherm She’s a student—you’ve got to meether.” (“And how deeply and completely I have done just that!’, writes Goebbels sixyears later, still besotted with Anka.)
Female students are in still rarities at German universities, and Anka is ararity among these She is reading economics Her eyes glitter blue-green, she wearsher blonde hair hair long with a few strands caught up in a knot on top; her anklesare slim, and her legs are rumoured to be equally divine She is twenty-three, twoyears older than Goebbels With her Ursuline convent education in Germany andEngland behind her, she has inherited class, beauty, and wealth as well—her latefather owned a distillery and cornmill in the Rhineland.
Kölsch and Goebbels become friendly rivals for Anka’s affections Among her fects will later be found a faded picture postcard showing Goebbels at some studentrevelry wearing a lampshade on his head. Pille has penned a fond message on theback And yet—let this be made clear in advance—sexually, Goebbels will get no-where with her; nor she with him.
ef-But the pursuit, the pursuit!
Since Anka is a regular at Professor Hermann Thiersch’s seminars on classicalarcheology, Goebbels signs on for them too Glowing reports reach the charity inCologne about his interest in these three-hour lectures And the miracle happens:Anka Stalherm, this goddess of the mysterious grey-green eyes, she who is coveted
by half the males at Freiburg university, saves her smiles for when he walks in, or so
it seems to him She is fascinated by this swift intellect They go out as a threesomefor strolls up Freiburg’s Castle Hill or into the Black Forest Kölsch suffers torments
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of jealousy, which enhances Goebbels’ sense of triumph He serenades Anka on arented piano, and one precious night he sleeps under the same Black Forest roof asher The three students tour the sleepy towns along the shores of Lake Constance,with Goebbels dreamy-eyed in blissful anticipation At Ravensburg he plays the hugecathedral organ for them
Oppressing him despite these carefree moments are his poverty and his own ousy when she spends days away with Kölsch His uncle Heinrich Cohnen, a wealthyinsurance-director friend of his father’s, twice wires him loans The Catholics are lessforthcoming While the Unitas journal reports the unexpected revival of their Freiburgchapter thanks to Ulex and his pal, after August Goebbels’ name vanishes fromits pages altogether
jeal-The delicious pursuit of Anka continues Every detail of her coquettishness mains implanted in his memory—the cigarettes she deftly filches from him, his let-ter of reproach, her silent rapture when Goebbels reads out his latest epic, his pri-vate glee at Pille’s jealous suffering, and their reading of Gerhard Hauptmann’s ‘TheSunken Bell’ together in her room, where Goebbels serenades her on the piano butascertains that she is, alas, ‘chastity itself.’
re-His first letter to her is dated June , , a wordy, Latin-garnished, solemn
epistle addressing her formally as sehr geehrtes Fräulein Stalherm, embellished with
four lines of carefully crafted verse and signing off ‘with quite a lot of greetings,yours faithfully, J Goebbels ◊ Ulex.’ Persistence and intellect are rewarded Up onCastle Hill one afternoon—it is June , —he kisses her for the first time:
not on the lips, but on one cheek. There is a problem: she is of far higher pedigree.There is an unholy row when she does not invite him to meet her visiting brotherWilly And he agonizes over her dalliances with Kölsch: which does she prefer? One
evening she pleads with him on bended knee to declare his love for her, and he
real-izes that women too can suffer
As she leaves Freiburg at the end of July after one last night of stifled passion,
he visits their old haunts He sits in the forest hut high above the university city,listening to the rain beating on its roof, and imagines himself all alone on earth He
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writes her romantic messages ‘Love has gone away,’ he writes ‘The flower has died.’
He begins to compose a five-act play, ‘Judas Iscariot.’ He misses Anka badly. Whymust the most beautiful roses have the sharpest thorns? He reminds her of their firsthour together, reading the poetry of Theodor Storm He will miss her, with herdreamy eyes and lustrous golden hair Their hour of parting comes—”O, avert notthine eyes…They are glistening and moist O, do not weep, we are not parting forever Come give me thy dear hand, dost thou feel how the same pulse beats in bothour veins? Tomorrow we sally forth into the world.’ ‘And now, fare well Come, give
me one more parting kiss, and do not weep.’ After she has left the little Castle Hillboarding house, clutching an armful of roses he has bought her, he returns to thatmeadow and lies all evening thinking about her until far into the night The next daythere is a card from her—she still has his roses in her arms ‘How I envy those roses,’
he writes back, the flattery flowing freely from his pen
As the Freiburg term ends he dreams of moving to Munich, but the lack of ings there thwarts him and he returns home During the summer vacation he ex-changes scores of letters with Anka, sometimes twice a day His letters to her reveal
lodg-a young mlodg-an still physiclodg-ally frlodg-ail lodg-and lonely; they suggest thlodg-at he hlodg-as elected to enterthe Church Romancing Anka occupies every other waking hour His catchword is
wahnsinnig—crazy: that is what he is, he confesses, about her He scrawls that word
in the corner of letters, or leaves it unfinished just as waaa— He is untroubled by
the wail of rage that comes from Agnes Kölsch: ‘I thought far too highly of you, toonoble and too mature,’ she writes him on August , : ‘Fare well, it was notmeant to be.’ Much ink is expended trying to arrange various trysts, which Goebbelssometimes prudishly cancels because her worried mother (unimpressed by this par-venu) and her sisters disapprove. Once she gives him a red rose It graces his desk atRheydt beneath a carved Black Forest heart she has given him earlier. On August
he is completing Act Three of ‘Judas.’ ‘Good night, dear Anka,’ he writes her ingly ‘Think of an afternoon at the Waldsee Lake, and how there is one thing’—hedoes not specify what—‘that Ulex always finds so terribly difficult.’ He recalls toher that first triumphant kiss on Castle Hill His soldier brother Konrad, home on
Trang 32teas-
leave, jokes to him that he will probably be able to greet him as a cardinal later on.Konrad inquires about the carved heart on the wall ‘A gift from the Archbishop ofFreiburg?’ he asks ironically ‘From his lady housekeeper,’ replies Joseph with a sala-cious wink.
Joseph beavers away on ‘Judas.’ Anka incautiously shows it around and in no timethe clergy of Rheydt are asking him angry questions about it. On August he issummoned to his former scripture teacher Father Moller, who draws his attention tothe pernicious nature of such writings ‘I was so furious I would have torn “Judas”into a thousand shreds if I had had it with me,’ writes Goebbels The priest requireshim to undertake to destroy even his own copy of the script Has all his toil been fornothing? ‘What shall I do?’ he appeals to Anka ‘I am in despair.’ (The play survivesamong his papers.) It marks his first break with the Church He declines the sum-mons by Unitas to attend their general assembly in Münster to report on the sum-mer semester at Freiburg Instead, he carouses with his pals in Düsseldorf ‘Lastnight,’ he tells Anka, ‘we played music We listened to two Chopin nocturnes, andBeethoven’s “Pathétique.” I now play a lot of Liszt rhapsodies.␣ ␣ Afterwards we talkeduntil one A.M about freemasons [Fritz] Prang’s father is in a Lodge.’ In a secondletter that day he asks Anka to plant a tender kiss in one corner of her next letter.
He reads from Richard Wagner’s diaries, he plays the Master’s music to his pals, and
he commends to Anka one entry which touches, he says, on one bone of contentionexisting between them. Her mother is dismayed that they are still liaising; once,Anka asks if his mother is upset too.
Kölsch has been thrown out of their Catholic fraternity Goebbels has supportedthe ouster, explaining to Anka: ‘My best friend turned out to be a scoundrel.’ WhenAnka ironically calls him a Puritan he responds that Unitas has principles. By thistime he has learned from her that Kölsch has sexually propositioned her. To sealtheir friendship, she loyally shows him the letter concerned Of her solely maternalinterest in him there seems no doubt ‘Do you know what I should like now?’, shewrites to the pintsized student Goebbels ‘Just to stroke my fingers through your hairand clasp you so tight that you look quite desperate.’
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Her widowed mother’s disapproval grows He records in dismay that she regards
him as a homo molestissimus and clearly frowns on any notion of them both attending
the same university next term He stiffly asks Anka to inform him where she will bestudying, ‘so that I can cross that university off my own list.’
ON September , Konrad Goebbels returns to the western front He accuseshis younger brother Joseph of not taking any interest in the war and finally extractsfrom his a promise to read at least the daily war communiqués Konrad declares that
he is proud to be fighting for his fatherland ‘As you will realize,’ Joseph drily informsAnka, ‘he is Mother’s darling While I claim that privilege, remarkably, more of myfather.’ But he adds, ‘I believe my mother is the best at understanding me.’ Headvises Anka to read his version of the Last Supper, where Judas—with whom hethus identifies—talks about his mother, how he sulks and does not eat, and she justshakes her head and murmurs, ‘Judas, Judas;’ and how bitterly he weeps thereafter.
He hopes that Anka’s mother will relent and agree to them studying together atMunich His father prefers Bonn or Münster, both nearer to the parental home ‘Thedecision is in your mother’s hands,’ he writes to Anka. A friend tells him that she hasboasted to his fiancée about her last evening with Goebbels at Freiburg. Goebbelsscolds her for having so rudely dragged in the dust the memory of these, ‘the mostsacred and beautiful hours of my life.’ In the same letter he repents and asks, ‘May Ito-day for the first time press a tender kiss upon your rosebud lips?’ In her reply,she mocks his stern morals She has decided to study that winter at Würzburg Hetherefore chooses Würzburg too, and finds lodgings on the fourth floor of No.Blumen Strasse—”A wonderful room right beside the river,’ he describes to Prang.Ecstatic that she is so close by, he sends her a note as soon as he settles in, perhapsjustifying his lack of physical ardour ‘If love is only in the mind,’ he explains, ‘itmight be called platonic; if only physical, it is frivolous, ugly, un-beautiful It is thenoble union of these two factors that creates the ideal love.’
At Würzburg his studying begins in earnest He ploughs through ‘Crime and ishment,’ he regularly attends the seminars on ancient and modern history, and on
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German literature The Armistice of November makes little mark on him Hisfather writes pleading with him to come home if things get too dangerous inWürzburg. Goebbels notices the returning troops, the popular sense of dismay, theestablishment of enemy zones of occupation; he sees Anka weeping, he hears of com-munist mobs rampaging in Bavaria
A few days ago [he writes to Fritz Prang on November , ] we had a bigmeeting here in the Auditorium Maximum…␣ and one of the older students,wounded in the war, had this to say: ‘Just now the blind and raw mobs seem tohave the upper hand But maybe the time will come again when they will feel theneed for an intelligent lead, and then it will be for us to step in with all ourstrength.’
‘Don’t you also feel,’ he asks his friend, ‘that the time will come again when peoplewill yearn for intellectual and spiritual values rather than brute mob appeal?’More letters go to Anka He writes her the kind of letter that romantic femaleslong to receive. In her replies she frets about his frailty, and swears undying love ‘Ihope you’ve gone to bed long ago,’ she writes in one, ‘and are dreaming that I ampressing the trend’rest kiss upon your forehead to dispel your gloomy thoughts forall eternity.’ For the first time in his life he misses the carol service on ChristmasEve; he spends the hours in Anka’s room, and watches entranced as she kneels at herbedside to say her prayers He sleeps in her chaste embrace—but that is all.
By the time they both leave Würzburg on January , , the Belgians haveoccupied Rheydt An Allied iron curtain has descended across the Rhineland Sickand hungry, Goebbels writes her at four-thirty A.M on a deserted platform, waitingfor the slow train to Cologne. At the Honnef checkpoint a friendly young Tommywearing a soupbowl helmet waves him through At Cologne he has to wait all night—
‘the whole station milling with Englishmen, B lacks, and Frenchmen.’ Anka writes
to him in Rheydt that she misses Freiburg; her sisters, shown Goebbels’ photographs,prefer his head to the full figure, she candidly writes. He looks desperately ill: he issuffering from chronic headaches, for which the university’s professor of medicine
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has found no cure. A ten P.M curfew is in force The Belgian censors will not passletters written in German script; gradually his handwriting deterioriates Without afrontier permit, travel to Recklinghausen is impossible Anka’s mother wants theirrelationship ended anyway; upon her return home, her mother has dragged her off
to church to confess her sins Anka tells Goebbels she has prayed for him He sets upher three latest photos in his room, including one on a sunlit Castle Hill.
THE post-revolutionary government ordered elections for January , On theelection eve he heard his old teacher Dr Bartels speak for the Democratic Party ‘Iwas strengthened,’ wrote Goebbels, ‘in my opposition to the Democrats.’ All hisformer schoolmates would vote for the Catholic Centre or the more rightwing Ger-man Nationalist party; already, Goebbels inclined toward the latter— ‘There arestill Germans in the German Fatherland, thank God.’ He envied those living outsidethe occupied territories like Anka in Recklinghausen ‘God grant,’ he wrote her, hisletters displaying political fervour for the first time, ‘that our Fatherland will oncemore become the way we knew it as children.’ In the election, despite pressurefrom their father (the local returning officer), Joseph and his brother Konrad bothvoted for the German Nationalists. ‘Grim times,’ he predicted a few days later, ‘lieahead for us Germans.’ A talk with organised workers at Rheydt has convinced himthat they might have a real case against their capitalist oppressors.
That May of Anka returns to Freiburg Kölsch is down there too Goebbelshurries to join them A French Negro soldier lets him through the checkpoint atLudwigshafen Anka seems cooler, and confesses one morning that she has slept withKölsch Goebbels forgives her and kisses away the tears of contrition welling in hereyes For an instant of happiness she is willing to accept an eternity of perdition, hewill write in July ; a truly divine female, but not one for him to marry, hedecides. They would destroy eachother He finds her love soothing, yet invigorat-ing Anka has a Russian grandfather which explains, he decides, why her love is soboundless and overwhelming Each time he sees her again over the years that follow,his knees will knock and his face will flush just like the first time.
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One afternoon in there is a knock at his door in Freiburg and Richard Flisgeswalks in, rain dripping from his demob trenchcoat An ex-lieutenant, he is backfrom the wars, decorated and embittered, his arm in a sling. He has failed the uni-versity entrance examination and will now turn into a pacifist and agitator againstthe established order of things Goebbels listens eagerly to this rootless, ill-educated,disillusioned soldier He has always had a respect for the lower orders Writing toWilly Zilles in he has discounted the poet Horace’s theme of odi profanum vulgus
et arceo (‘I hate the vulgar mob and keep them at a distance’) preferring instead the
romantic poet Wilhelm Raabe’s motif: Hab’ acht auf die Gassen! (‘Pay heed to the
street!’) Flisges introduces him to the socialism of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engelsand Walther Rathenau and implants further trace-elements of the anti-bourgeoisclass struggle in Goebbels Thus, while Goebbels attends the seminars on Goethe
and on the era of Sturm und Drang he begins to think more about the social and
political issues scarring the defeated Germany In the evenings he argues about God;
he is beginning to have serious doubts about his religious beliefs
He and Anka leave Freiburg early in August ., He has to borrow one hundredmarks from a friend, and pawns his watch to a waiter to pay for supper He has tospend the autumn break at Münster as his identity papers will not get him back intothe occupied Rhineland Anka phones him every day in the local cafe, but he canbarely afford the obligatory cup of coffee He begins to write his own life story as anovel, ‘Michael Voorman,’ in which Anka is identifiable as the heroine Hertha Holk
He gets home to Rheydt crossing the frontier illegally in an overflowing train atDüsseldorf On September he posts to the Albertus Magnus Society a fresh appli-cation for funds
Later, heading south to Munich with Anka, they pause briefly at Frankfurt where
he visits Goethe’s house But why tarry in this Jewish city, he asks himself, whenMunich beckons from afar? He borrows , marks from yet another schoolfriendand finds lodgings in Munich on the second floor of Papa Vigier’s at No. RomanStrasse, out in Neuhausen On October , his twenty-second birthday, Anka writes
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in his diary, ‘National Holiday!’ He sends two more postcards to the Catholic ity; the stamp on one is overprinted with the legend People’s Republic of Bavaria.The charity makes him a final loan of marks At Munich he studies under theSwiss art historian, Professor Heinrich Wölfflin; he studies music under ProfessorHermann Ludwig Baron von der Pfordten and Catholic theology under ProfessorJoseph Schnitzer But his real intellectual nourishment is from what he takes in at thegalleries and museums—the paintings of Arnold Böckling, of Carl Spitzweg, and ofAnselm Feuerbach He reads voraciously, devouring Sophocles’ drama ‘Antigone,’August Strindberg’s ‘The Red Room,’ Thomas Mann’s ‘Death in Venice,’ and assortedworks by Henrik Ibsen and Leo Tolstoy
char-Again he auctions his suits, sees Anka pawn her own gold watch, hocks his ownwatch for a pittance to—he recalls in —an ‘insolent Jew.’ Such stereotypedreferences are rare in his early letters On the contrary, he writes to Anka oncegently rebuking her ‘As you know, I can’t stand this exaggerated antisemitism,’ hewrote, in a reference to their teacher Gerhard Bartels ‘I can’t claim that many of mybest friends are Jews, but my view is you don’t get rid of them by huffing and puffing,let alone by pogroms—and if you could do so that would be both highly ignoble andunworthy.’ There is still little trace of the later murderous antisemitism in JosephGoebbels
The year is recorded in JG’s handwritten curriculum vitae appended to his doctoral dissertation (Reuth, ).
An article on Flisges is on microfiche in packet of the Goebbels papers (Moscow archives).
A one hour interview of Hompesch’s wife taped by Westdeutscher Rundfunk in is
in Mönchen Gladbach city archives.
JG, ‘Der tote Freund,’ Apr (Genoud papers; Reuth, ).
See his school reports - in BA file NL./.
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See JG’s eulogy, ‘Gerhardi Bartels Manibus!’ Dec , (BA: NL./).
Fritz Göbbels to Joseph Goebbels, Nov , (facsimile in Neue Illustrierte, Jun ,
; original now in BA file NL./).— According to an article, ‘Studentenbriefe,’ in
Ruhr Nachrichten, Dortmund, May , , JG left a suitcase filled with snapshots, love letters (including letters from Anka Stalherm and ‘one letter by Joseph Goebbels to Georg Mumme’), poetry, press clippings and other early documents with his mother for safekeeping Worried by a air raid on Rheydt he phoned his brother Hans to place the case in safety; Hans deposited it in the lung clinic at Holsterhausen operated by the Rhineland Insurance Fund of which he was president In about Feb , according to Frau Hildegard Meyer, a nurse at that clinic, Hans came to destroy the papers as the Americans approached; she persuaded him to let her take them She sold them to the Catholic ‘Wort und Werk
GmbH’ publishing house, according to an article in Abendzeitung, Aug , (IfZ archives).
Alerted by these press items, Swiss lawyer François Genoud acquired title to JG’s writings from the administrator of Goebbels’ estate by contract of Aug , , subsequently amended
on Oct , and Mar , , and he fought several legal actions against Frau Meyer and others to establish his title to them in , , and in Germany.—From court papers in the author’s possession.
JG, ‘Wie kann auch der Nichtkämpfer in diesen Tagen dem Vaterland dienen?’, class paper dated Nov , ; quoted in ‘Joseph Goebbels bewarb sich beim “Judenblatt”,’ (JG
applied for job with ‘Jewish rag’) in Westdeutsches Tageblatt, Jul , ; these papers from his
youth had just been sold in a Berlin auction They are now in BA file NL./.
Now in Genoud’s possession.
Hans served in Inf Regt., was in French captivity from Jun , to Jan ,
See Kölsch’s contribution inUnitas, organ of the association of Unitas Catholic student
fraternities, th year, No, , June , (BA file NL./)
The text is in Genoud’s papers (Reuth, )
Programm zum Vereinsfest des Bonner Unitas-Vereins, Jun , ; Unitas, Jun and Aug (IfZ: F, Heiber papers and BA: NL./)
Extracts from of these were published in Echo der Zeit, Jul and , And see the article ‘Ein feiner Vertreter des Dritten Reiches,’ by Studienrat Karl Klauck (clerk to the Society since ) in Kölnischer Volkszeitung, Jan , ; also documents in BA file NL./
.
Hermann Kölsch to JG, Nov and , (Mönchengladbach city archives); Bering,
.
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JG’s correspondence with Agnes Kölsch is in BA file NL./.
Writing to JG on Nov , Mrs Kölsch called herself his Mütterchen (little mother) number two (BA file NL./).
Diary, Jul , ; and Mar , : Anka’s son Christian is ‘just like her: blond with blue eyes.’
Agnes (‘Anka’) Stalherm was born on Oct , in Recklinghausen; died of cancer in
, and is buried at Horben, above Freiburg.—See the curriculum vitae in Freiburg’s Albert Ludwig-University archives, , appended to her dissertation, ‘Kapitalbedarf und Kapitalbeschaffung in der Industrie nach dem Kriege.’ I am indebted to Anka’s friend Irene Pranger and daughter Annette Castendyk (née Oswald) for information about this key fig- ure on Goebbels’ romantic horizon.
Undated postcard from Karlheinz Kölsch to Anka in Freiburg (Pranger collection).
Her daughter volunteered to me (interview, Nov , ) that Anka told her she found Goebbels intellectually attractive, but physically not.
JG to Anka Stalherm, Jun , (BA: NL./); two letters on this file dated
‘Feb ’ are in fact from Feb .
Writing her on Sep , he asks if he may kiss her rosebud lips ‘for the first time’ (ibid.)
On Jan , he writes her that there is a snapshot of her on Castle Hill meadow on his desk, ‘and for Ulex it is as though he must sit down and press a tender kiss on her dear cheek just like then’ (ibid.)
Entitled ‘Judas Iscariot Eine biblische Tragödie in fünf Akten von P.J Goebbels,’ the
pp manuscript, written on squared paper in immaculate, legible, copperplate Sütterlin script, is dedicated to Anka Stalherm ‘in tiefer Verehrung’ (with deepest respect) (BA: NL./)
JG toAnka, Jul , Aug , , (BA: NL./)
Agnes Kölsch to JG, Aug , (BA: NL./).
JG to Anka, Aug , (BA: NL./) Frau Castendyk (interviewed, Nov ,
) says Anka’s mother regarded JG as an Emporkömmling (parvenu).
Trang 40 See JG to Anka, Mar , (BA: NL./).
JG to Willy Zilles, Jul , (Mönchengladbach city archives; Reuth, ); JG’s essay,
‘Wilhelm Raabe,’ Mar , , is in Genoud’s papers.
JG to Anka Stalherm, Feb , (BA file NL./).